The Jamestown 400: Phase Two and The End

Notice I didn't say on my previous JT400 post that I would post the rest of the story tomorrow.  Never promise that you will finish a post tomorrow.  It just doesn't happen...

"Tomorrow never comes..." - Archibald Forbes, from In Freedom's Cause by G.A. Henty

Ahem.  To continue with our adventures during the Jamestown 400...

It was about here, that I realized that finding map fragments really wasn’t all that bad, at least compared to what we had to solve now!  In P2 we learned about the legend of Braddock’s gold, heard more about Elias Boudinot, and found a letter from Hitler’s secretary!  This treasure hunt was getting really mixed up, with Elias Boudinot, Jack Bradford, Hitler, and more, getting involved!  It was crazy!  I can’t even remember all of the people, historical and fictional, who were involved.  There was Jack, of course, and the Peabody brothers (Eccleston and Dartmouth:), Gretchen March, Martin, and, oh, what was that guy’s name?  I forget what his name was, but he was super scary!=)  I think it was Aaron Burr, but I can’t remember…oh well.   It was sometimes hard to remember that we weren’t really saving the world.  We were just one of many families participating in a really cool treasure hunt:)

 

We continued to solve increasingly difficult clues in P2, working our way towards Phase Three, the final physical search for the treasure – 400 gold coins!  Nothing from this phase really stands out in my mind except for the last two days of the treasure hunt, everything else was just a blurr…

(I'm going to quote mostly from my journal at this point, since I wrote about our adventures it in-depth.  Naturally, I've fixed the spelling errors...I hope;)

From my journal – May 13th, 2007

“Well, tomorrow until midnight on Tuesday are the last two days of the Jamestown 400: Our National Treasure Hunt.  Tomorrow, Monday, there is supposed to be a barrage of questions.   We are going to the F’s house tomorrow around 8:30 in the morning to work on them together.  That was Aubrey’s idea.  I guess he figures the more brain power we have, the better.  More individual ideas too, I suppose.  It will be fun, but intense.  We’ll have to be ‘on our toes’ as the saying goes...well, I have to get to bed, big day tomorrow!”

 

May 19th, 2007

“Well, the Jamestown 400, is now over.  Here is the story:

On Monday (the 13th), Alex and I went home with Mrs. F from Azure pick-up (our food co-op).  We then spent the rest of the day locked up in the F’s cook shack working on clues.  The little girls were not allowed in, except for Ellen because she is now a member of the BGC (Big Girls Club).  Lilly took a nap, but Tilda wanted in very badly.  She started talking to us through the drain pipe on the washer.  She told us that we were all very mean and she didn’t like us anymore.  Alex, my brilliant brother, had the idea to pour some water down the drain pipe!  Aubrey thought that was a great idea, so he quickly ran outside and got a bucket of water.  He poured some down the pipe.  We waited for the results, only to hear Tilda say, ‘You missed me!”  Then we heard her run around to the door.  She started banging and yelling.  Now, there’s a window above the door in the cook shack.  We all looked at the window, then at each other, and started laughing!  Aubrey took a bottle of water, climbed up on two buckets we stacked up, unlatched the window, and dumped out the water!  After he dumped it out, we all cracked up, and then heard this, “You missed me!”  Drat!  However, we had a grand time.  We solved two clues before it was time to go home.  It wouldn’t be completely truthful to write this story without telling you about out capture the flag game.  I was guarding the flag, when Aubrey jumped out of the bushes and grabbed the flag.  Naturally, I started chasing him.  I was running as fast as I could, when I got to a rather muddy hill.  I couldn’t slow down, so I tripped and fell.  Can you believe it!  How embarrassing!  So, anyways, we were still working on the third clue when it was time to go home.  After we got home, Aubrey called to say he solved it.  He gave us hints, and we go the answer.  Then we solved two more clues.  My hand is tired, so I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.”

That was such a fun day!:)  I think the extra brain power was helpful, and it was much more fun to work on it with friends, of course:)  And that hill was very muddy, if I remember correctly...I fell headlong, so I got quite a bit of mud on my clothes.  Plus, I found just about the only rock on that hill, which of course I landed on.  Ouch, that hurt.  Good times, good times=)  And why we didn't just tell Mrs. F that Tilda was being a pain, I have no idea...

  

~ A posed shot of us in the F's "cook shack".  We look sooo professional with our code books and computers;) ~

May 20th, 2007

“To continue my story:

The next day, Tuesday, was the last day of Phase Two.  We made arrangements for Aubrey, Lilly and Tilda to come to our house.  Kellie had piano lessons and couldn’t stay.  We got right to work.  Aubrey had solved another clue the night before, and gave us a hint.  We got that answer, then Aubrey solved another one that he had been working on.  We then worked on several more and solved two.  Then there were no more clues for a while.  Alex, Aubrey and I went for a hike.  When we got back, there was another clue, which we solved, and then they had to leave.  Mom and I had Special Olympics, but Alex stayed home to work on the JT400.  He and Aubrey and dad figured out some more clues over the phone.  I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow, because I don’t want to skimp the details.”

  

~Team JT400 historians Natasha and Kellie~

May 23rd, 2007

“To finish my Jamestown 400 experience:

So, mom and I are at Marian’s, and Alex is home alone working on a clue.  He was trying to figure out a secret password on the U of N website (University of Roanoke – it doesn’t really exhist).  All he had to go on was this clue, “Think Moby Dick”.  That’s all.  Of course, the first thing thatcame to mind was the first line in the book, “Call me Ishmael”.  He tried it with and without spaces (between the words).  No luck.  Finally, Aubrey called and said, “Take out all the spaces”, which included the I.D. name, ‘I.M. Truman”.  Bingo!  We already had tried the correct password, ‘CMI” (call me ish, etc.).  Mom and I got home, and Dad and Alex were onto the next clue.  It was the motto of the ‘Sanger Initiative’ (another fake organization, I believe).  Aubrey got that one really quickly because he had figured out a seemingly unimportant message several weeks earlier.  Many people got stuck on that one.  Aubrey gave us an extra clue for that one.  The next question we wasted a lot of time on, because the agency wouldn’t accept anything but the absolutely flawless answer.  The next question I knew right off (I believe it had to do with the legend of Braddock’s gold, which I had researched thoroughly earlier).  Then, the last question.  With only about 15 min. until midnight, which is when the JT400 was officially over, we tried to find the answer to the last clue.  We had to find a quote from someone Elias Boudinot greatly admired.  Who was it?  George Washington?  Alexander Hamilton?  Richard Halkuyt?  Who?  Ahh!  Only three minutes to midnight!  Panic.  The phone rings.  It’s Aubrey with the answer!  Alex is too excited to speak straight, he hands the phone to mom.  Mom can’t understand Aubrey’s technical talk, so she hadn’s the phone to Dad.  When we finally got the answer in, it was already a minute after midnight.  We didn’t make it to Phase Three, but we had fun and sure learned a lot of history!  However, the Fs did make it to Phase Three, and they will be going to Jamestown for the treasure hunt.  Hurrah!  I hope they find the treasure!”

I could never hope to convey  the stress of those last 15 minutes.  Wow.  I hope I never have to do that again!  The enormous amount of stress, and then the wave of relief that swept over us when we realized we were done!  We had persevered and finished!  I'm sure I cried at that point...and laughed with relief:)

May 24th, 2007

“The Fs got a new e-mail today about the JT400.  It said that in Phase Three, no one is allowed to use their computers or internet.  Instead, they will receive text messages from Jack Bradford on their cell phones.  Can you believe it!  No computers!  Aubrey is having a fit!  They’ll probably be using compasses and maps and stuff.  This is right up Alex’s alley.  He’s really sad that we didn’t make it to Phase Three.  He loves these types of things!  Oh well, God knows what’s best, even if we don’t think so.”

 

~Team JT400 computer expert Aubrey, with code master Alex~

Alex was terribly disappointed, as was I.  It would have been a lot of fun.  But, like I said then, it wasn’t meant to be.

June 5th, 2007

“The Fs leave for the east coast on Thursday.  Kellie will be gone for two weeks!  How will I stand it?”

Kellie, I can tell you truly that those were some of the most miserable weeks of my life!  I mean, I got to go to the Mounted Shooting clinic, and see the Lipizzaners perform in Spokane, and we had a skunk in garage (wait...was that a highlight?) but it was still miserable.

June 11th,2007

“Today I got to talk to Kellie on the phone!  It was so good to hear her voice.  Tomorrow, at 5 in the morning, they should be getting a text message from Jack.  They have to figure out the clue and reach the destination indicated by 7 o’clock.  If they don’t make it there by 7, they will be eliminated from the JT400.  Give then clear thinking and wisdom Lord.  I hope they don’t get lost in those unfamiliar streets.  (aww, aren’t I considerate?:)”

~ This is on Jamestown Island in front of a statue of Captian John Smith ~

June 13th, 2007

“I talked to Kellie again today!   This time, I was able to talk with her for longer, so I got the whole scoop on the Jamestown 400.  Here is their story:

On Monday, Vision Forum called together all of the contestants to tell them about this last phase of the treasure hunt.  They got to meet a lot of the people from the internet forum, so that was really neat.  They went to another meeting Tuesday morning.  A man, the moderator came up on the stage and announced, ‘Jack is your friend, but I am not’.  Wow!  Then they got their first clue.  It was encoded.  They deciphered it.  It proved to be five riddles.  Five of them!  How horrible.  So they went to a library or something to try and find the answer.   While they were there, they got a text message from Jack.  He told them that Peabody (one of the main fictional characters – he was supposedly knocked off) is still alive, and he’s waiting for them outside.  Another text, you will know you have the right man if he knows what you’re talking about when you say the Sanger Initiative motto.   So then they had to walk around Williamsburg (Duke of Gloucester St.) asking every man they saw the question, “New history for a better tomorrow?”  They didn’t find Peabody, and they didn’t figure out the riddles, so they were eliminated.  Very disappointing!  Sort of a relief to, they were pretty wiped out.  They did a good job and persevered.  Now they can enjoy the rest of their trip.”

 

I only wish I could have been there to see all of the contestants walking up and down DOG street!  After asking the question for a while, the Fs made a sign with the motto/question on it, and pinned it to Aubrey’s shirt so they wouldn’t have to keep asking it:) 

June 28th, 2007

“Yesterday we found out who won the JT400!  It is a 19-year-old girl named Melanie Thomas.  In the same article on ‘Doug’s Blog’ (Doug Phillips, president of Vision Forum), was a picture of the JT400 sign in table.  Just for fun, I looked to see if I could see the Fs in the picture.  Lo and behold, they were there, right in the front!”

~ They're right in the middle of this picture - Kellie is wearing a white shirt (actually, it has purple stripes and flowers, but you can't really tell, so...) with a green skirt, Clara has a pink skirt on with a white shirt, Mrs. F has a denim shirt on, and Aubrey is wearing a black shirt and a baseball cap.  They're there, really, they are...;)  And so are some other people I "know", but you don't, so why did I even mention that?~

And that folks, is a complete and detailed history of our Jamestown 400 adventure.  I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed reliving the memories.

Persevero!

~Tasha~

Know Boudinot?

Captian John Smith

My cousins, Mom, Dad, Alex, and  I in front of the Captian John Smith statue on Jamestown Island, in October 2008.

 

 

DOG Street:)  No, I didn't have a sign that said "New history for a better tomorrow", but I did walk up and down it several times:)

 

Under the Magna Charta tree (and remember, it's pronounced car-ta, not char-ta...;)

The Jamestown 400: Yearbook Write-up

Two years ago, my family and I participated in The Jamestown 400: Our National Treasure Hunt, which was sponsored by the Vision Forum.  I enjoy reliving the memories so much, that I've decided to share them with you all.  I will do so in several posts, because to put it all in one post would no doubt break the record for the longest post every posted on a blog:)

This first post contains a short description of the hunt, which I wrote for our homeschool yearbook.  It will give you a brief over view of the treasure hunt.

I hope you enjoy it:)

The Jamestown 400: Our National Treasure Hunt was sponsored by Vision Forum to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown The object was to learn how the providential hand of God shaped our country through the leadership of Christian men like George Washington and Elias Boudinot.  To accomplish this, sleuths worked their way through increasingly difficult clues in three different phases to find 400 gold coins hidden in the Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg, Virginia historic triangle.

The F and H families joined other code and history enthusiasts in scouring the internet and the 2007 Vision Forum catalog for clues to help them solve Phase One of the JT400.  They cracked codes such as Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Substitution Ciphers, book codes and Pigpen Ciphers aided by Aubrey F’s ingenious website Spy Tools (now renamed AltaMatic), learning interesting historical facts along the way.  After being among the first thousand families to finish Phase One, both families qualified for Phase Two.  After working on Phase Two for more than a week, the Falconer family was among the first 100 to finish and move on to Phase Three.  Unfortunately, the Hs were a minute late in submitting their final answer, and did not qualify for Phase Three.  The Fs traveled to Jamestown, Virginia to compete in the actual search for the 400 gold coins.  Although they didn’t end up finding the treasure, they were very happy for the Thomas family, who did.  

Persevero!

The Jamestown 400: Phase One

This is a faithful history of our adventures during the Jamestown 400: Our National Treasure Hunt.  I’ve included as much as I can remember of the hunt, the main highlights (for me at least), and a few of my journal entries during that time.  Anything in my journal entries that are in parethesis are comments from me now, they were not in my journal.

Enjoy!

We first became interested in the treasure hunt, when Aubrey, who had been working on it for about a week, told Alex about it.  He emailed the details to Alex, and soon we had joined the thousands of families across the United States, searching through the 2007 Vision Forum catalog for clues.  The clues in the catalog included an anagram, hieroglyphics, and colored letters.

Once we’d found the secret website ( I can’t tell you what it was – it’s a secret;), learned a bit about Elias Boudinot, the forgotten President, there was no way we were going to not continue with the hunt.

- Elias Boudinot -

The first few clues were pretty easy.  Our fictional…“boss”, I guess you could say, was a man named Jack Bradford.   Jack ran a detective agency called the Boudinot Agency, named after Elias Boudinot, of which we were “members”.   He remained rather mysterious throughout the entire treasure hunt, showing up to give us clues, and tips along the way. 

During Phase One, we learned all about George Washington’s spy ring, the Culper Ring, which I found fascinating.  Then we had a few questions where we had to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar (or was it the other way around?) in order to figure out the exact date of…something.  I can’t remember what:)  And then, they hit us with a doozy.  At least, at the time I thought it was a doozy.  If I had only known what they had in store for us later on…  They gave us an unidentified map fragment, and we not only had to find the rest of it, but find out who commissioned it to be made!  Oh, I remember thinking in disbelief, “They want us to do what?!”  However, we persevered, and eventually found it.  The next three questions involved finding map fragments.  I must confess, I was getting a bit tired of those map fragments.

 

And then, we got stuck on a clue for 5 days.  Yes, five, FIVE, 5 days!  Oh, I will never forget the agony we went through, trying to figure out that clue!!!  It was horrible!  We thought it was the end for us, and had decided that if by the end of the week we hadn’t figured it out, we weren’t going to waste any more time on the hunt.  We knew we were looking for another secret website (thanks to a tip from the F family, who were a bit further along than us), but we couldn’t figure out the correct web address.  We continued to search, trying every combination of the words in our clue, “find message from christian almanac man”, to try and find the website.

We finally found it.  It turns out that we had the correct answer on the first day, but because we didn’t have Apple QuickTime installed, nothing had popped up when we were on the correct website:{  I believe that’s when my intense dislike of anything Apple began…;)

Yes, we found Mr. Big, whom Jack had alluded to, but I can’t tell you who he is.  Classified information;)   He told us, “Know Boudinot”, which was the answer to our clue.  Some members of the family thought it was “No Boudinot”, but the answer came back as incorrect.  I thought to try out “know” instead.  I’m so clever;)

From my journal – April 12th, 2007

“We finally made it past the clue we were stuck on in the Jamestown 400.  We figured out ten more clues tonight in just under 4 hours.  That’s pretty exciting!”

We continued on with the hunt, learning about the lost colony of Roanoke, Virginia Dare, the Dare Stones, and much more.   Ahh, it was here, on question #20, that I had my moment of glory.  I knew the answer to the question right away:)  We didn’t even have to spend hours looking for the correct answer=)  It was one of Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest.  I was very pleased with myself.  Still am, actually=)  Yep, I felt like I was really cut out for this detective business…until we got the next clue, of course:)

The last few questions of Phase One (P1) were our introductions to codes and ciphers.  We used Aubrey’s cryptography site, which he created for the hunt, to decode many messages.  There were two substitution ciphers (I think), and one using Masonic code (aka a Pigpen Cipher).   Mom’s moment of glory came with the last question.  She decoded the message completely by hand, although the rest of us had been struggling in vain to decode it.  Even our code expert, Alex, didn’t get it.

The messages mom decoded was a quote from George Washington:

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”

 

From my journal – April 14th, 2007

“Well, we did it!  We figured out the last clue this afternoon.  Mom actually deciphered two of the code words and we all helped with the rest.  Unless they (Vision Forum) release another message before Monday, then we have made it through Phase One.  If we were one of the first 1,000 people to complete Phase One, then we get to go on to Phase Two.  The first 100 people to complete Phase Two get to actually go to Jamestown and search for buried treasure.  That would be really fun!”

We solved 24 clues in all, in P1.  We had been in pretty constant contact throughout P1 with the F family, sharing tips, and ideas.  After a rest of a few days, we received our first clue for Phase Two (P2)...

To be continued...

Sheep Shearin' Blues

I got the sheep shearin' blues, I got the sheep shearin' blues...

Only I didn't have the sheep shearin' blues, because Hank Little (also of the fabulous Bluegrass band The Panhandle Polecats) came out to shear my sheep this morning.

So I didn't have to do anything but stand back and watch:)

That's Lady Jane that he's shearing there.

Hank did a good job.  He also trimmed both the ewe's toe nails, and castrated all of my lambs.

I'm going to (hopefully) go to sheep shearing school next year, where I'll learn to shear sheep and llamas.  It's just easier to do it yourself, rather than having someone else do it, although Hank's prices are more than reasonable.  He's in the US Army Reserves though, so it's kind of hard to get a shearing appointment with him because he's always going somewhere for training.

While their mother, Esther, was being sheared, the twins, Stanley and Oliver, would look at each other, like they were saying, "Do you know where mom is?"  "Nope.  Do you know where she is?"  They were so cute:)

Ollie (aka Oliver)

Quincy was almost beside himself when he couldn't find his mom.  Unlike the twins, he had no one to hang out with.  After Lady Jane was sheared and back in the pen, Quincy didn't recognize her without her fleece, and he kept staring at her fleece on the tarp and baaing.  I directed him over to his mom, and, as soon as he smelled her, he was completely happy again:)

 

Ollie again.  Stanley, his brother, is a bit more camera shy and skittish, so I don't have as many pictures of him.

One of our lamb customers, Brenda C. and her two daughters, Samantha and Sydney, visited today to see our lambs.  They happened to come at the same time Hank did, so they got to see some sheep shearing, which they thought was really neat.

Sydney got to collect eggs too:)  She's sooo cute, but not quite as cute as Clara, of course;)

We visited the horses too.  Samantha gave Bob some grass, which he thoroughly enjoyed:)  Samantha and Sydney each have their own pony at home, so they're old hands at feeding horses treats.

Happy Trails!